Users with disabilities who wish to travel using a wheelchair or other wheeled mobility device, but who do not have a vehicle which allows for easy stowage of the mobility device, often encounter problems. For example, vehicles such as minivans and full-sized vans with large cargo doors, pickup trucks with large access cabs or cargo boxes, and SUV's benefit from large and logical wheelchair storage areas, several of which are located conveniently close to the seating area which individuals with disabilities may need to access. Preferably, with such vehicles, there is a minimum of distance between where a wheelchair may be stowed and the destination of the individual inside the vehicle. For reasons of fuel economy, personal choice, and/or comfort, many wheelchair or mobility-impaired persons who are unable to, or for whom it is unsafe to, walk to the rear of a vehicle from a passenger or driver's door, will desire access to vehicles with severe space constraints. These persons may nevertheless wish to store either a power or manual wheelchair or other personal mobility aid such as a walker with the vehicle. In vehicles with severe space constraints, this may mean that the only logical place to store a mobility device is in an area adjacent to the seat in which the user plans to sit. Although some lifts exist which allow a user to store a mobility device in an area adjacent to the seat in which the user plans to sit, such as the area inside the mid position sliding door of a van or the area to the rear of the front seats of an extended-cab pickup truck, the majority of those lifts have two drawbacks. First, they do not allow for stowage of the mobility device in a 90-degree rotated position (the majority of wheeled personal mobility devices are longer than they are tall, thus causing the overall footprint of mobility device plus device to be more significant), and the mechanism is generally behind the wheelchair, which protrudes into the area of the adjacent seat, most often causing the loss of seating capacity of one person or more. In addition, the fact that alternative devices require a larger drive mechanism, typically a telescopic or parallel-arm arrangement moving atop a sliding track, contrasts sharply with the more advantageous configuration of the apparatus disclosed herein, which has a single drive mechanism featuring a belt drive (recognized to be the drive mechanism with the greatest differential between extended and retracted positions thus the most compact in the stowed/retracted position), located underneath the mobility device when in the stowed position. Alternative devices which offer the smallest footprint such as the Speedy Lift from Adapt Solutions have the disadvantage of having a docking device which requires the wheelchair to be stowed in the unfolded position, which typically requires the wheelchair width dimensions to be less than the available door opening width. The duckbill/blade style docking device of the apparatus disclosed herein has no such restriction due to its location on a single side of the wheelchair. Some lifts such as the Braun Chairtopper do exist which allow both for stowage of a wheelchair on a rooftop and delivery of same to a driver's or passenger's door. However, many users have reservations about such technology as rooftop devices often compromise appearance, fuel economy, handling, and stability of the vehicle.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there may be significant problems and shortcomings associated with current mobility assistance systems.